Social responsibility is intertwined with nursing; however, perceptions of Iranian nurses about social responsibility has not been explored yet. This study, as part of a larger qualitative grounded theory approach study, aims to explore Iranian nurses’ perception of social responsibility. The study participants included 10 nurses with different job levels. The study data were generated through semi-structured interviews. The participants were selected through purposeful sampling approach, which was then followed by theoretical sampling until reaching the point of data saturation. All (...) the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through constant comparative analysis. Positive human characteristics, professional competencies, professional values, solution-focused nursing care, and deployment of professional performance are five categories obtained from the study. The participants believed socially responsible nurses to have positive personality characteristics as well as the necessary skills to do their duties accurately. Such nurses also respect the values, observe the professional principles, and take major steps toward promotion and deployment of the nursing profession in the society. (shrink)

We examined the links between moral identity—the centrality of moral principles to identity—and political purpose during emerging adulthood. We analyzed data from two waves of a longitudinal study of civic purpose. T1 surveys were collected before high school graduation and T2 survey were collected two years later. We categorized people (N = 1,578 at T1 and N = 480 at T2) into political purpose groups based on the person-centered perspective and then performed multinomial logistic regression analysis to test whether moral (...) identity was associated with categories of political purpose. The findings from our study indicate that moral identity at T1 is linked with the maintenance and formation of T2 political purpose. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to test whether personal commitment to community was related to political involvement in two cultural contexts: Italy and the USA. Participants were 566 adolescents (48.2% males) aged 14–19 years (M = 16 years; SD = 1.29): 311 Italians and 255 Americans. Participants filled out a self-report questionnaire. Analyses of variance revealed that American high school students reported higher levels of personal commitment to community than did their Italian peers and that many forms of political (...) involvement were significantly more common among American adolescents. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that personal commitment to community was strongly and positively associated with involvement in political activities in both adolescent samples. Thus, fostering personal commitments to community could potentially lead youth to political engagement. (shrink)

Using relevant encyclicals issued over the last 100 years, the author extracts those principles that constitute the underpinnings of Catholic Social Teaching about the employment relationship and contemplates implications of their incorporation into human resource policy. Respect for worker dignity, for his or her family's economic security, and for the common good of society clearly emerge as the primary guidelines for responsible human resource management. Dovetailing these three Church mandates with the economic objectives of the firm could, in essence, alter (...) the firm's nature because profit motivations would be constrained by consideration for worker and societal welfare. Integration of Church teaching with current corporate goals should therefore impact greatly on a variety of human resource policies. (shrink)

My goal is to define intending. I defend the view that believing and desiring something are necessary for intending it. They are not sufficient, however, for some things we both expect and want (e.g., the sun to rise tomorrow) are unintendable. Restricting the objects of intention to our own future actions is unwarranted and unhelpful. Rather, the belief involved in intending must be based on the desire in a certain way. En route, I argue that expected but unwanted consequences are (...) not intended, examine the two senses of "desire," distinguish intending from being willing, and relate intending to a variety of other propositional at? titudes. (shrink)

From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, (...) a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements. (shrink)

Moral education through service learning at post-secondary level is an important but under-researched field. Most existing studies center on its learning outcomes like academic progress, personal development, communication, and leadership skills, with only a few evaluating the moral development of college students participating in service-learning projects. The lack of study on moral development in service learning indicates a need for clarification of the theoretical underpinnings of service learning, John Dewey's ideas on moral growth, in particular his model of moral imagination (...) and the implications thereof, for current service-learning research and practice. We argue that Dewey's work here can help strengthen .. (shrink)

Because metaphysics aims for absolute generality, its primary job is to tell us what are the fundamental particulars, of which one may say that is ultimately all there is, and yet be assured of an unabridged version of reality. It should be clear that such a search for the fundamental particulars is totally different from the enterprise of determining which particulars are basic from the point of view of particular-identification, which though it has recently been labeled "metaphysics," albeit "descriptive metaphysics," (...) might less confusingly be called "descriptive epistemology.". (shrink)

We introduce an abstract framework for general rough set theory from a mereological perspective and consider possible concepts of ’a priori’ granules and granulation in the same. The framework is ideal for relaxing many of the relatively superfluous set-theoretic axioms and for improving the semantics of many relation based, cover-based and dialectical rough set theories. This is a relatively simplified presentation of a section in three different recent research papers by the present author.

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructing Constructivism” by Hugh Gash. Upshot: The concept of “constructivist teaching” seems unattainable for two reasons: a philosophical and an empirical one. Also, Hugh Gash’s survey is not so much about radical constructivism in education, but a review of different connected ideas labeled “constructivism” that have dominated the educational field.

Moral distress is one of the core topics of clinical ethics. Although there is a large and growing empirical literature on the psychological aspects of moral distress, scholars, and empirical investigators of moral distress have recently called for greater conceptual clarity. To meet this recognized need, we provide a philosophical taxonomy of the categories of what we call ethically significant moral distress: the judgment that one is not able, to differing degrees, to act on one’s moral knowledge about what one (...) ought to do. We begin by unpacking the philosophical components of Andrew Jameton’s original formulation from his landmark 1984 work and identify two key respects in which that formulation remains unclear: the origins of moral knowledge and impediments to acting on that moral knowledge. We then selectively review subsequent literature that shows that there is more than one concept of moral distress and that explores the origin of the values implicated in moral distress and impediments to acting on those values. This review sets the stage for identifying the elements of a philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress. The taxonomy uses these elements to create six categories of ethically significant moral distress: challenges to, threats to, and violations of professional integrity; and challenges to, threats to, and violations of individual integrity. We close with suggestions about how the proposed philosophical taxonomy of ethically significant moral distress sheds light on the concepts of moral residue and crescendo effect of moral distress and how the proposed taxonomy might usefully guide prevention of and future qualitative and quantitative empirical research on ethically significant moral distress. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the functional anatomy of volition, as revealed by modern brain imaging techniques, in conjunction with neuropsychological data derived from human and non-human primates using other methodologies. A number of brain regions contribute to the performance of consciously chosen, or ‘willed', actions. Of particular importance is dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , together with those brain regions with which it is connected, via cortico-subcortical and cortico-cortical circuits. That aspect of free will which is concerned with the voluntary selection (...) of one action rather than another critically depends upon the normal functioning of DLPFC and associated brain regions. Disease, or dysfunction, of these circuits may be associated with a variety of disorders of volition: Parkinson's disease, ‘utilization’ behaviour, ‘alien’ and ‘phantom’ limbs, and delusions of ‘alien control’ . Brain imaging has allowed us to gain some access to the pathophysiology of these conditions in living patients. At a philosophical level, the distinction between ‘intentions to act', and ‘intentions in action’ may prove particularly helpful when addressing these complex disturbances of human cognition and conscious experience. The exercise and experience of free will depends upon neural mechanisms located in prefrontal cortex and associated brain systems. (shrink)